Synchronicity.

x6000.

All smiles. All heart.

Love.

Remember.

Michaela's scrapbook: a book filled with TopDeck maps. 

Me: "Why don't you just stick all the maps together?"

Flapjack: "Why don't you just use an Atlas?"

Jordan: "Cross out all the places you haven't been."

Michaela giving the scrapbook to us to look at. Having trouble finding the beginning. 

Jordan (being Michaela) : "Don't know where this thing opens, I've never used it before."

A Step Back. To London Time.

Goodbye's.

It is after an emotional day of dragging out farewells that I perhaps more fully understand why loners exist. Surely, it is easier to not make new friends altogether than to say goodbye. To be emotionally drained and saddened by the constant, overwhelming good times that always appear when you realise there won't be any more (at least for a couple of weeks). 

But then again, the brutality of leaving is only so great because of all the good times. Remove them, and the experiences, the adventures, the memories, and there is nothing. No fun. No smiles, laughs and late night chats. No hurried rushes to Sainsbury's and trips to the park armed with frisbee's and picnic blankets. 

It is these experiences that make the goodbye's hard and therefore validate the emotional roller coaster and tumultuous experience that is in the act of the goodbye itself. 

So really its not about the goodbye, its about celebrating the experiences and memories you've made together. It's about enjoying the time spent together and moving on, the moments treasured and never taken for granted. 

You had me at "Hello".

Maybe you're running late. You have to pick the children up from school, attend a dentist appointment or race through traffic to get to work.

Maybe you're not feeling so great. A little ill, grumpy or worse, hungry.

Maybe you just have a thousand things on your mind, trying to formulate a way to filter through your to-do list with only a limited number of hours in your busy day.

Whatever the case, your mind is elsewhere.

Then I come along. I'm walking, probably meandering, with little to no time constraints. Nowhere to be, nothing pressing to fill my next few hours. I am content in the moment, dragging one foot forward followed by another. Perhaps admiring the shining sun, the foreboding clouds.

I am your antithesis. The calm to your storm.

I see you coming, but you don't see me. Your head is down but I can see your furrowed brow. You don't have enough hands to carry all your items and your hair is dishevelled.

Then we are close. We are in each others path and I try to position myself outside of yours but you're looking down, thinking of something else, placing yourself a couple of hours ahead. At the last moment you look up. I think my foot entered your downward vision and a quick glance up has you realising that if we keep walking we will collide. I, the stroller, you, the rushed.

At this close distance I can see that you're tired. You have light lines around your eyes and a hint more than a five o'clock shadow. Your glasses are on you head, perched at an odd angle, as if you placed them there hours ago and have long since forgotten. Your bag looks like its about to self combust and you have files jammed haphazardly into a folder they have long since outgrown.

You look at me in the eyes and I wonder what you're thinking. That I so clearly have nowhere to be and you long for that? Or that I look bored with no urgent destination? Maybe you just want to question why I'm standing right in front of you, blocking a path you so desperately need to get past.

You look at me in the eyes, and you smile. "Hello" you say, your eyes glistening with compassion, with an unspoken understanding.

Then you're walking past me, your brow furrowed once more, your files spilling out of your hands and your glasses teetering dangerously close to the edge of your head. I notice that you're wearing a suit and dress shoes. You're almost stumbling under the weight of your obstacles.

"Hello" I say, to your disappearing back. And then you're gone.

Sunday. February.

Productive weekend.

I didn't do much, physically. But I kind of got my brain in order after suffering a mid-morning demise on the crux of my future.

Yes, I'm still at home. Applying for jobs from afar and getting little to nowhere. (Now is definitely not the time to throw the "You have as many hours in your day as Beyonce" line at me. I cannot control the outcome of my emotions, or fists for that matter, if so.)

I knew the imbalance of applications to responses would soon get to me, deflating my forced posivibes, but I didn't realise that it would kind of be a good thing. What do they say? It is how we perform at our lowest, that truly defines us? Probably not that, at all. But you get the gist. I had to feel desolate, despondent and contemplative to understand what I wanted, and to really know whether I was willing to fight for what I wanted.

Ridiculous, or not. Pure stupidity, or not. I am ready. I am ready and willing and able and excited.

It led me to the concept of risks. It will be a risk. Perhaps my biggest. I have never been less set up in a new city of intended dwelling.

But I do think it is our risks that define us. How we risk, what we do for our risks, whether we risk at all. Our risks can be the worst thing that ever happens to us, and they can be the best. Either way, taking the risk - the biggest step, will allow us piece of mind. We will find out one way or another if our risk was the right thing to do.

Life is full of little risks.

I am excited for my next one. It may be a terrible idea; action lacking plan or a misstep, a blimp in intention, founded on a whimsical wish or a dream without sense.

Risks are different, for everyone, but the important thing is that we face them instead of running away, or turning our back. Life is risks. Sometimes they are the basis for our finest moments, our best memories, those tales we pass down to any willing ears.

At least for me, if this risk fails; it is merely a three hour flight home.

Remind me never to get into extreme sports.

Human Fate.

Have you ever been at that stage where you don't know what to do?

I'm not talking standing in front of the fridge with a multitude of food choices. Nor am I talking about that moment when your wife/husband/partner/loved de facto asks you where you've been and you don't know whether to tell the truth that you've been at the pub/bar/watching reality TV or lie and say work/friend's/library. 

I mean when your life literally comes to a standstill. You've moved back in with your parents, quit your job or stopped travelling. Or you've moved out of your parents, got a job or started travelling. I'm talking about those phases of life that feel like the end of an era but envisioning the next phase of life seems near impossible. Like a world without Twitter. 

That phase happened to me. Perhaps it happens to all of us, at some time or other. If the earth conspires to help us get what we want, then I needed to be more clear. Unemployed and homeless was never the plan. I had signed off on the travelling part of my life. Not completely, just to show my parents that I did have long term goals, career plans and a focus on the future beyond what country I'd be in tomorrow, or where I was going to find dinner. 

Thinking ahead as a twenty something is a daunting prospect. The 20's are a mindfield of selfishness. We don't have children, mortgages or long term investments. We are animal free, rent any appliances we need and even our plants don't make it through winter. It is a decade of 'me', 'I' and pure focus on the 'self'. It feels like an entitlement. 30 year olds will look at us with toddlers running round their feet, their eyes glistening with the promise of freedom, of nights without tantrums and collapsing into bed fully clothed. We are told to make the most of it, that it won't be like this forever. 

So we do. We travel spontaneously, dance with our eyes closed, stumble through streets, tell stories as the sun rises and laugh, cry and love unabashedly free, fiercely young and living the moment. 

But after awhile we discover this isn't the way we'll live forever. We need to stop, slow down, look ahead. No one but the members of Jackass can continue in this pattern. 

And here I lie. 

I'm contemptuously searching for jobs, trying to come with words I like to put into a search box I've seen too much of. I need experience, but can't find it. I feel like a ballet dancer who's been told that the only spots going are for boxers. I'm competing against thousands with more experience, better backgrounds/grades/work attire. I'm sending my CV to another island where a skim-reading 9 to 5'er makes flippant decisions on my future. Thousands of miles away I think of the suit wearing individual who will decide my fate on the construction of my words. Is he married? A rugby fan? Does he like camping? Have children? Drive a Ford? Is he happy? 

I can't see his face and he can't see mine. I am a collation of letters and he is my God. 

I still don't know what to do. It's not up to me.